kacee

I can honestly say three things worked for me (though everyone is different and MANY people will argue with me about the scales thing). 1. I weigh myself EVERY day, in the buff, same time. PERIOD. I log my weight every day on my FitDay program. I am 6 months out an can see EXACTLY where I was at any give time in the process, watch my plateaus and calculate their length. My scale is digital with tenths of a pound. I watch those tenths as closely as I watch the full pounds. 2. I log ALL of my food in my FitDay program. Each day when I get home from work I enter everything I have eaten through the day. I can correlate my weightloss through the process with my food intake, see where I was doing well, and where I screwed up. 3. I set MINI-GOALS. I mean MINI goals. My goal is to lose about 4-5 pounds before the end of the year. My average weight loss has been 2.25 pounds per week (which is HIGH), so as I am nearing my goal, I think this is more realistic. I don't set goals I cannot reach. Sometimes I may even set a goal to get down "xx" tenths of a pound in three or four days. When you set goals you can achieve it gives you incentive to go on and set another goal when you meet that one. It is a leapfrog process.

Something happened to me when I got the band. I must have psyched myself or something because my determination and my will-power jumped to levels I never knew I had. For me, it has actually (dare I say it) been rather easy. I don't feel like I have suffered at all or been deprived. I have excellent restriction and I have to be VERY careful with the quantity and quality of food I ingest. If I screw up it can be very uncomfortable for me. It is a learning process for me and I think I am heading for the downside of the curve now. It has been so long since I put large amounts of food in my stomach I no longer seem to have appetite fits (you know...when your eyes glaze over and you froth at the mouth and all you can think about is getting to Taco Bell (or wherever) for that "fix"). When I DO get an inkling of the "munchies"...I go and get something to eat. Even if I head for something that I really shouldn't have, I find I can only take about three bites at best, and then it goes in the trash or wherever, and I do NOT go back to it....the appeal is gone within those three bites. I also find that a lot of these foods I just loved don't give me the satisfaction I used to get. I truly think the satisfaction came from the gobbling plus the taste, rather than just the taste itself. Now that I cannot gobble...a lot of the appeal has gone out of it and I think more clinically about my food.

Well, never say never. I would say it depends on your medical history and your family medical history (do these co-morbidities run in your family and are your parents or siblings also overweight?). I am inclined on the surface (strictly my opinion, mind you) to think that a doctor would be reticent to do the procedure on you (right NOW) and might ask you to wait a few years. I think a lot of this would rely on the attitude of your parents too....whether they were supportive and acknowledged that this would be an ongoing problem for you based on your history and your family pre-disposition. Insurance? Who knows. A lot of us "old folks" couldn't get covered by insurance and had to self-pay. Insurance coverage is a battle at best. Good luck though!

I've averaged overall 2.25 pounds a week. I am within 17 pounds of MY goal (I am 7 pounds from the goal my doctor set). My 6 month bandiversary was Nov. 23. I'd love to hit 160 by year end.

Yep, step up your protein drinks and your liquid intake substantially.

Totally normal, Summer. Too bad your doctor asks you to wait 60 days for a fill. You are still healing now and your band is NOT WORKING FOR YOU YET, so don't give up the ship! If you find yourself being hungry, by all means eat....but eat to fill yourself with low cal and filling foods. I kept fat free/sugar free jello around all the time. Every time I got the muchies I ate one (10 cal) or two.... Don't deprive yourself, but don't push a cheeseburger in your face, either. You WILL get full faster than you did before, but until you get a good restriction, that band isn't kicking in yet.

Tell your doctor what's going on and see about getting an aggressive fill. Not responding to the first fill is totally normal. The difference that I see is that you are just "giving up". Believe me, when the restriction kicks in it will be MUCH easier to stick to it. But you have to retrain your eating habits. I have yo-yo dieted my whole life (45+ years) and considered it completely impossible for me to lose weight and keep it off. I have been SHOCKED at how well I have done with the band. I have worked at it, let there be no doubt about that...but I am also human and I have slacked off on my exercising though my diet has been carefully watched. I am still losing. When I approach food I actually THINK before I eat or order now. I never did that before. The band isn't a license to retain your old habits and if you do, you will find a way to "work around" your band...but with determination (and I don't mean like you've had to do in the past) you can change it!

I give that a big AMEN. I highly recommend Spivak to everyone I meet who is considering lapband surgery (two friends of mind right now are considering....one has her consult this week with him). I can say nothing but good about him and his staff.

Hit my 50 mark too and boy is that encouraging! The most I had ever lost in my LIFE was 30 pounds (and I STARVED myself for three months...that was back when I was very young) and within a year I had put it back on. This loss feels different. It feels good. It feels permanent. It feels possible.

I think it was about in the third week when the shoulder pains ceased. And not to be indelicate, but encourage farting and burping because that is the ONLY way it's going to expel the air from your body.

Yep...you really need to EASE into public eating when you first start out. My first public experience I was already on solids, but I chose to have a lobster bisque because I knew I would be safe getting down a liquid in public. I have had two instances since then of having to PB at the first of a meal in a restaurant. I pretty much have it down to an art now and I can tell within the first three bites it things aren't going well. These two instances, I excused myself from the table, went into the restroom and let those two bites slide out. Things seemed to relax after that and I was able to finish my meal. I am VERY aware of eating VERY slowly when I go out to eat though.

Yep, probably the gas. I watched a video of a procedure being done and I was amazed to watch the surgeons go in and fill the entire abdominal cavity with air just before starting the procedure...the stomach blew up like a balloon!

In addition, take a good close look at what you are ingesting. Look at the ingredients. Are you sensitive to certain artificial sweeteners? I drink a clear protein drink every day (Isopure) and I gave some to my Mom to try. It gave her HORRIBLE runs, and apparently she is sensitive to the specific sweetener in it. However, it does sound like you had a stomach bug of some kind.

You are doing OUTSTANDING!!!! That's about 2.5 pounds a week and that is fantastic! The average weight loss should be around 1-2 pounds a week. The idea is NOT to drop 50 pounds in a month. Your skin and hair will thank you for it. Trust me. This process is WAY stressful for the body, and you don't want to stress your body out any more than necessarily, hence, the slooooooooooowwwwww but steady loss. You have absolutely NOTHING to be discouraged about!

You are going to feel twinges and pulls and gurgles and bubbles and all kinds of little sounds and feelings for a month or more. You're not going to drop dead and your body is trying to accommodate its new condition. Don't fight it. Things will sort out and settle down and stressing yourself over it is only going to slow things.

That's always a possibility. But I wouldn't think nausea would be the result. I went through a period about two months ago when I would get actually nauseus when I would eat. It went on for about a week or so and then stopped. It wasn't something getting caught, it was REAL nausea...the old "Uh oh, I'm gonna PUKE!" But afterwards I never felt bad at all, and it didn't feel like that HORRIBLE feeling you get when you are SICK and your head and stomach is swimming and you FEEL SICK TO YOUR STOMACH and horrible. This was like all of a sudden, and then it was gone completely and I felt just FINE! Weird. I don't know if it was a bug I may have had, or if I was slacking on my proteins or liquids or what.

Dave, you are ROCKIN!!! And you are doing exactly the RIGHT thing....mini-goals. That's what kept me going....not the old "Heavens I have to lose 70, 80, 150 pounds....like climbing Mt. Everest" but "Hey, I have an event to attend in 6 weeks. Wonder if I can get down 5 pounds for it!" That way you have a reachable goal in sight....sometimes I would even make them "baby mini-goals" (super easy to attain) and then when I would pass the goal "long" before its date I'd feel SOOOOOOOO good! Right now I am trying to knock off another 3-4 pounds before Christmas. I KNOW I can do it, though things are slowing down because I am close to goal.:whoo::clap2:

I'm in Houston. Mine was done in May of 2007 and I paid a total of $12,900.

Two years ago at 225 Night before surgery, 05/2007, 218 Six months Taken in November...about 20 pounds ago. Sorry I'm not smiling. I was feeling very chipper but I take such atrocious smile pictures when staged I wound up frowning.....

And THESE are the events that put concrete into our decisions to change our lives for the better.

Oh kiddo can I relate! I remember one of the most embarassing moments for me was a few years ago when I was at my top weight. My Mom, nephew and I went to a Houston event called the Ballooner Festival in the hot August. We had those cheapy folding chairs (the old kind with the fabirc type straps strung between the metal frame parts). We get in the middle of all the action, right at a crossroads for everyone going from here to there and decided to set up shop. We dropped our cooler and unfolded our chairs and sat down. And MY chair not only collapsed in a heap on the ground (with me on top), it literally disintegrated! And no, they weren't old chairs. It took the most supreme effort on my part not to burst into tears of embarassment. It was witnessed by no less than probably 100 people at the time. Even now I shudder....

It's not the lumpy factor so much as it may swell once it gets inside you.

<p>Calunda, have you had a fill yet? If not, your band is not really working for you yet. Determination and will power got me through my first 2 months post-surgery UNTIL my third fill, which hit the "sweet spot". I already had the "self-training" from being "good" for the past two months and when the restriction kicked in, it just further kept my portion size WAY down. However, during those first two months I DID loose 25 pounds...</p>

Okay, so the big day is here and those of us who are on solids are doing our calculations to get the best stuff, since we have to be judicious in our choices....I suggest forgoing any appetizers completely. I am bringing shrimp for my cousin who made a wonderful sauce, but I am looking at them and thinking "Okay, if I eat ONE shrimp, I have just eliminated one bite of the main meal I could get down." And if your meal is 5 or 6 bites, you gotta make every one count!!! I tend to graze on stupid things like olives and stuffed celery at family gatherings because as we all know it takes forever to get everyone's act together and get the food on the table. So today I will glide past the appetizers and concentrate on my WONDERFUL 1/2 piece of turkey (or less), tablespoon of dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberry, and whatever other delicious concoction arrives....NO BREAD. Anyway, that's my plan.... Everyone have a happy and blessed thanksgiving day and remember all the things we have to be thankful about in this world.

I think we are talking about apples and oranges here. Head and shoulders is a medicated shampoo that attacks the dermatitis on the SKIN. The END result is the loss of hair, but there is nothing wrong with the hair itself. Nioxin stimulates the scalp and probably has products in it to fluff up the hair shaft, but it does not claim to address dermatitis of the scalp. I can see the two working hand in hand.